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Florida Governor Backs Voting Changes

MIAMI — Two months after Florida was denounced for its chaotic election process, Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday endorsed three major changes proposed by the state’s election supervisors.

Governor Scott said he would support increasing the number of early voting days, including adding back the Sunday before Election Day, widening the range of polling places and reducing the length of ballots.

In 2011, the Republican-controlled Legislature changed Florida’s election law by shortening the number of early voting days and hours and tightening other election rules, including voter registration. Mr. Scott, a Republican, signed the bill, despite criticism from Democrats and voter and civil rights groups who said Republicans simply wanted to reduce the number of Democrats voting.

Election supervisors warned at the time that truncated early voting would lead to long lines and pose other hurdles. They were proved right. Voters in some counties and precincts waited in maddening lines, both during early voting and on Election Day. Some voters in Miami-Dade County cast their ballots after the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, had conceded the race.

Recently the governor has distanced himself from the 2011 election law. He told the state’s legislative black caucus this week that the election law was not his and that he had nothing to do with passing the bill.

The proposal calls for extending early voting once again to a maximum of 14 days from 8, including adding back the Sunday before Election Day, a popular day among black voters; increasing voting hours to 168 hours from 96; allowing votes to be cast at locations beyond election offices, city halls and libraries; and making sure that ballots are kept short.

Any change in the law must be approved by the Legislature, which convenes for its one-month session in March.

Mr. Scott’s endorsement comes on the same day as the release of a new report concluding that black and Latino voters were most affected by the 2011 changes.

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Of the more than 1.17 million ballots cast by black voters, nearly half were during early voting.

“They bore disproportionately the long lines that we all witnessed,” said Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who was co-author of the report.

Over all, the report found that compared with 2008, there were 225,000 fewer ballots cast during early voting and an increase of nearly 500,000 absentee ballots, in part because of fears about long waits.

Absentee ballots cast by blacks were twice as likely to be rejected as those by whites. Racial and ethnic minorities also cast a disproportionate number of provisional ballots and saw them rejected at higher rates.

“Many of the embarrassments that we saw in the November election would not have happened without Governor Scott’s signature and his administration spending taxpayer dollars to defend the Legislature’s voter suppression tactics,” Mr. Simon said. “So while it is heartening to see that the governor is willing to start a discussion about addressing flaws in our state’s election system, that conversation can’t stop here.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 18, 2013, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Florida Governor Backs Voting Changes. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe